


Parts and Pieces

by lufthexe



Series: Fire and Blood [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Depictions of past violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4004437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lufthexe/pseuds/lufthexe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Furiosa was fourteen when she was taken, old enough to associate green with Home and Men as distrustful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parts and Pieces

Furiosa was fourteen when she was taken, old enough to associate green with Home and Men as distrustful. Her mother lasts only three days with the War Boys, and when they cut her down in front of her she knows the part of her that grew in the green place, that child that thrived, all that will have to die. 

She can barely admit to herself that she is happier her mother did not have to witness her fate, did not see her become an object to be owned.

It is soon after she is taken for a Breeder. She cannot fully articulate her disgust with a society where women are seen as mere commodities, status symbols to be owned and used until they were no longer viable. She will never be a Favorite, but she is there all the same as they try to make her into Immortan Joe's ideal bride, the dirt and sand and rags of clothing stripped away from her skin until she feels more naked than she ever has. 

She does not hide the snarl in her mouth, the fury in her eyes when another girl's stomach swells; she is barely a child herself. 

She is sixteen when she takes a hidden knife to the flesh of her arm, the leather between her teeth barely masking her cries as she takes in trembling fingers what should not need to be sacrificed, but must. Immortan Joe does not keep imperfect women, damaged goods, and she would tear herself apart before staying a slave to the cruelty of men.  
Joe is furious.

She screams when they take the hot blade to her scalp, shearing her head of one of her last inheritances from her mother. It pools at her feel in liquid rivers, and she knows loss again. Always again, and again, endless cycles of survival and pain. 

But she has survival ingrained in her bones, written in the brand upon her neck, and she builds a new arm out of spare parts, knowing that it was her ticket away from Joe. To whatever small freedom she is allowed. She is still a wife, though, and lives higher than the starving masses. High enough to witness the them clamor for drops of water, knowing it was their only hope for survival. Not high enough to distance herself from feeling the pangs of sympathy, of compassion for the dying. 

________________________________________

She does not tell anyone, not even the girls, the first time she sneaks onto a rig, riding out with the War Boys to make War. It is the farthest she has been from the Citadel, and the closest to the Green Place she has been in many years. 

The green place is all but a fertile dream, grass and trees foreign words on her tongue. 

Would they even recognize her? she wondered; with the price she had paid, grease smeared on her forehead and her eyes hard as the rock they lived in.  
But underneath, on underneath, there is a burning reckoning waiting for them all. She had paid her price, but less so than the other girls, who still were stuck as Breeders of children they did not desire--it is for them and only them that she feels true empathy, for she has known their suffering, and does not think herself better, stronger for having escaped. She was simply more desperate.

Max looks at her with the same desperation; and while she has no room for more on the Rig, she has no choice. He has paid a price, one he will not address but she can see in the twitch of his hands, the muttering under his breath. They are not whole, but they are all the Girls have. 

And that will have to be enough.


End file.
